Beyond Hindu and Muslim: The Courtly Ramayanas of North India

In the 17th and 18th centuries, artists produced gloriously illustrated Ramayanas for both Hindu and Muslim rulers. In a lecture titled Beyond Hindu and Muslim: The Courtly Ramayanas of North India, Debra Diamond, curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, compares four illustrated Ramayanas and explores the diverse meanings of the epic during this period. She will consider how Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindi Ramayana manuscripts variously inflected the epic narrative, and what they reveal about the mechanisms though which a shared Indo-Islamic elite culture was forged.

This lecture will be held in Ackerman Hall on Level Three of the Carlos Museum.